Cold fusion (disambiguation)

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Cold fusion is a hypothesized type of nuclear reaction that would occur at or near room temperature.

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Cold fusion Hypothetical type of nuclear reaction

Cold fusion is a hypothesized type of nuclear reaction that would occur at, or near, room temperature. It would contrast starkly with the "hot" fusion that is known to take place naturally within stars and artificially in hydrogen bombs and prototype fusion reactors under immense pressure and at temperatures of millions of degrees, and be distinguished from muon-catalyzed fusion. There is currently no accepted theoretical model that would allow cold fusion to occur.

Fusion, or synthesis, is the process of combining two or more distinct entities into a new whole.

Nuclear fusion Process naturally occurring in stars where atomic nucleons combine

Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei are combined to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles. The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manifested as either the release or absorption of energy. This difference in mass arises due to the difference in nuclear binding energy between the atomic nuclei before and after the reaction. Nuclear fusion is the process that powers active or main sequence stars and other high-magnitude stars, where large amounts of energy are released.

Thermonuclear fusion is the process of atomic nuclei combining or “fusing” using high temperatures to drive them close enough together for this to become possible. There are two forms of thermonuclear fusion: uncontrolled, in which the resulting energy is released in an uncontrolled manner, as it is in thermonuclear weapons and in most stars; and controlled, where the fusion reactions take place in an environment allowing some or all of the energy released to be harnessed for constructive purposes.

A nuclear electric rocket is a type of spacecraft propulsion system where thermal energy from a nuclear reactor is converted to electrical energy, which is used to drive an ion thruster or other electrical spacecraft propulsion technology. The nuclear electric rocket terminology is slightly inconsistent, as technically the "rocket" part of the propulsion system is non-nuclear and could also be driven by solar panels. This is in contrast with a nuclear thermal rocket, which directly uses reactor heat to add energy to a working fluid, which is then expelled out of a rocket nozzle.

Fusor An apparatus to create nuclear fusion

A fusor is a device that uses an electric field to heat ions to nuclear fusion conditions. The machine induces a voltage between two metal cages, inside a vacuum. Positive ions fall down this voltage drop, building up speed. If they collide in the center, they can fuse. This is one kind of an inertial electrostatic confinement device – a branch of fusion research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pyroelectricity</span> Voltage created when a crystal is heated

Pyroelectricity is a property of certain crystals which are naturally electrically polarized and as a result contain large electric fields. Pyroelectricity can be described as the ability of certain materials to generate a temporary voltage when they are heated or cooled. The change in temperature modifies the positions of the atoms slightly within the crystal structure, such that the polarization of the material changes. This polarization change gives rise to a voltage across the crystal. If the temperature stays constant at its new value, the pyroelectric voltage gradually disappears due to leakage current. The leakage can be due to electrons moving through the crystal, ions moving through the air, or current leaking through a voltmeter attached across the crystal.

Muon-catalyzed fusion is a process allowing nuclear fusion to take place at temperatures significantly lower than the temperatures required for thermonuclear fusion, even at room temperature or lower. It is one of the few known ways of catalyzing nuclear fusion reactions.

Inertial electrostatic confinement Fusion power research concept

Inertial electrostatic confinement, or IEC, is a class of fusion power devices that use electric fields to confine the plasma rather than the more common approach using magnetic fields found in magnetic fusion energy (MFE) designs. Most IEC devices directly accelerate their fuel to fusion conditions, thereby avoiding energy losses seen during the longer heating stages of MFE devices. In theory, this makes them more suitable for using alternative aneutronic fusion fuels, which offer a number of major practical benefits and makes IEC devices one of the more widely studied approaches to fusion.

Adobe ColdFusion is a commercial rapid web-application development computing platform created by J. J. Allaire in 1995. ColdFusion was originally designed to make it easier to connect simple HTML pages to a database. By version 2 (1996), it became a full platform that included an IDE in addition to a full scripting language.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neutron generator</span> Source of neutrons from linear particle accelerators

Neutron generators are neutron source devices which contain compact linear particle accelerators and that produce neutrons by fusing isotopes of hydrogen together. The fusion reactions take place in these devices by accelerating either deuterium, tritium, or a mixture of these two isotopes into a metal hydride target which also contains deuterium, tritium or a mixture of these isotopes. Fusion of deuterium atoms results in the formation of a helium-3 ion and a neutron with a kinetic energy of approximately 2.5 MeV. Fusion of a deuterium and a tritium atom results in the formation of a helium-4 ion and a neutron with a kinetic energy of approximately 14.1 MeV. Neutron generators have applications in medicine, security, and materials analysis.

ColdFusion Markup Language, more commonly known as CFML, is a scripting language for web development that runs on the JVM, the .NET framework, and Google App Engine. Multiple commercial and open source implementations of CFML engines are available, including Adobe ColdFusion, Lucee, New Atlanta BlueDragon, Railo, and Open BlueDragon as well as other CFML server engines.

Pyroelectric fusion refers to the technique of using pyroelectric crystals to generate high strength electrostatic fields to accelerate deuterium ions (tritium might also be used someday) into a metal hydride target also containing deuterium (or tritium) with sufficient kinetic energy to cause these ions to undergo nuclear fusion. It was reported in April 2005 by a team at UCLA. The scientists used a pyroelectric crystal heated from −34 to 7 °C (−29 to 45 °F), combined with a tungsten needle to produce an electric field of about 25 gigavolts per meter to ionize and accelerate deuterium nuclei into an erbium deuteride target. Though the energy of the deuterium ions generated by the crystal has not been directly measured, the authors used 100 keV (a temperature of about 109 K) as an estimate in their modeling. At these energy levels, two deuterium nuclei can fuse to produce a helium-3 nucleus, a 2.45 MeV neutron and bremsstrahlung. Although it makes a useful neutron generator, the apparatus is not intended for power generation since it requires far more energy than it produces.

Lithium tantalate Chemical compound

Lithium tantalate (LiTaO3) is a perovskite which possesses unique optical, piezoelectric and pyroelectric properties which make it valuable for nonlinear optics, passive infrared sensors such as motion detectors, terahertz generation and detection, surface acoustic wave applications, cell phones and possibly pyroelectric nuclear fusion. Considerable information is available from commercial sources about this salt.

Divergence is a function that associates a scalar with every point of a vector field.

Molten salt

Molten salt is salt which is solid at standard temperature and pressure but enters the liquid phase due to elevated temperature. Regular table salt has a melting point of 800 °C (1472°F) and a heat of fusion of 520 J/g.

Ion Reactor, is an invention by a British scientist.

The ARC fusion reactor is a design for a compact fusion reactor developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC). ARC aims to achieve an engineering breakeven of three. The key technical innovation is to use high-temperature superconducting magnets in place of ITER's low-temperature superconducting magnets. The proposed device would be about half the diameter of the ITER reactor and cheaper to build.

Lattice confinement fusion (LCF) is a type of nuclear fusion via exposing deuteron-saturated metals to gamma radiation, avoiding the usage of confined high-temperature gasses used in other methods of fusion.